Another new year has started. For many people a new year is a positive time. A time for new beginnings and to reflect on the past year (or years!). A chance to make some changes so that life runs a little more as you want it to. And for this we have the new year’s resolution. A specific thing (or things) that you believe will make a significant difference. Did you make a a new year’s resolution this year? What was it? Have you kept it (so far!)?
I like new year too. It’s good to reflect and to look forward to the year ahead. But if I’m honest, as I’ve got older I’ve also grown a little more cynical. I’m not sure that I really will make things so different in the year ahead. For all my hopes and dreams, life doesn’t usually work out as I might want. And I don’t make new year’s resolutions anymore. If I had one for this year, perhaps it would be to write more posts on my blog! But why? What difference is it really going to make? Why do I bother?
This comes back to what we consider the purpose of life. The new year’s resolution seeks to direct our life more towards that purpose. We hope the year ahead will be better aligned with what we really believe life is about.
For each of us, that life purpose will be different. For many it will be enjoyment. This sounds selfish but we just have one life so we might as well enjoy it! For others life is about success, perhaps in sport, a career, gaining fame or earning lots of money. And for yet others it’s the relationships that matter, both family and friends. And still others will get their meaning and purpose in how they can help others. The difference that they make to society. What you would say the purpose of life is for you?
The Bible book ‘Ecclesiastes’ spends a lot of time also looking at this question. What is life about? Its author tries out many if the options I’ve just listed, and others beside. He seeks after wisdom and learning, he tries just living for pleasure and possessions. He tries to get satisfaction in his work. He gains political power and wealth. And he also reflects on the satisfaction of companionship. But at the end he concludes that ‘everything is meaningless, completely meaningless’.
I also find these unsatisfying as a purpose for life. I will try and explain why in future blogs, but for now suffice to say – none of them really cut it for me! And without any satisfactory purpose to life aren’t we just tempted to despair, a downward spiral of cynicism and negativity?
But I do believe there’s meaning and purpose to life. However it’s not based around the differences that I make – either to my own life, or those around me. I hope and pray that I will make an impact, but that will only be limited. No meaning and purpose comes from outside, not from within myself. The writer of Ecclesiastes looks for purpose from what is ‘under the sun’. But for me only as I look elsewhere, to the one who made that sun, can I find a purpose that satisfies. This is one of the main reasons I am a Christian. Without God I struggle to find purpose and meaning in life. He is the one that makes the new year worth looking ahead to!
Lloyd about life 